Scenes from a marriage
by Quarto
Summary: The two most beautiful words in any language are "I Forgive." -Stephen King, "The Wind Through The Keyhole" Or: A selection of missing scenes from "His Last Vow"
1. Chapter 1

He slips back into the old flat like a man slipping into an old coat. All the things in his bedroom are exactly where he left them three years ago. A sentimental gesture on Sherlock's part? Possibly. Or possibly Sherlock couldn't be bothered getting rid of them, which seems more likely given that everything is covered by a thick layer of papers, books, and other detritus. Sherlock has never quite gotten the hang of the idea of a single-purpose room, and without constant monitoring will inevitably expand his possessions to fill any available space.

He cleans it all away. Papers into the filing cabinets (he should probably buy another one next time he's out, these are getting overstuffed again). Books on the shelves (by topic and then by date of publication, because Sherlock finds alphabetizing tedious). Anything still in evidence bags into a box, which he will take to New Scotland Yard in a few days. Anything that's an obvious biohazard gets binned. Then he changes the sheets, undresses, and gets into bed.

Quite an ordinary summer night in Baker Street, really.

The only real change is that the actual listed occupant of the flat is not in his normal position (in the lounge, glaring at something). That's because he's unconscious and heavily sedated in hospital after his second round of emergency surgeries in as many weeks.

And the reason Sherlock's there and John is here? The woman who put a bullet into _Sherlock's_ chest but somehow managed to destroy _John's_ heart? The stranger, the woman he doesn't know, the murderess who had disguised herself as the unexpected love of his life?

Mary. Or whatever her name is.

Physically, she's probably in her bed (their bed) in Hampstead. It's so late it's early, she had an eventful day, and she's sleeping a lot more now that she's pregnant. But she's also in a thumb drive on the side table in the lounge, waiting for him to plug it into the computer and meet her. And she's in his head.

He has absolutely no idea what to do about that.

* * *

He fetches his clothes and some papers from the house. It goes badly. Mary (or whatever her name is) tries to talk with him, and all he can manage to do is shout. At some point, feeling as though his face is alight, he screams at her, "Are you even a fucking nurse?" which is entirely irrelevant, but she's wearing her scrubs and he needs to scream about something, anything.

He can actually see the words break something in her, just before she spits back "Yes. Yes I am a fucking nurse. Since you manage to be a fucking doctor and a fucking thug at the same time I don't see why you think other people can't have multiple careers."

It keeps on from that point but is hardly a productive dialogue. They have never really had a fight before: minor tiffs, certainly, but in general they just had gotten on well and relied on the natural desire to see the other one happy to get over any disagreements. Clearly, they've been missing out on an undiscovered natural talent, since they go at it like professionals, fighting dirty, wanting to see blood.

That's the hell of it. If he didn't love her (it's easy to admit in his mind even if it's always been hard to say) he wouldn't want to hurt her now. To make her feel like he feels.

He quits his job, giving no notice, and signs up with his old locum agency. For someone who was once such a promising medical student he's beginning to have an extremely patchy CV. It's better than having to see her every day.

* * *

He goes to visit Sherlock in the evenings. At first these are brief visits, with his friend wandering in a chemically-mediated haze. But then, Sherlock's much-derided "transport" shows the same vitality that has enabled him to survive an awful diet, purposeful insomnia, a cocaine habit, and enough cigarettes to fumigate most of London.

It's a routine miracle, but Sherlock begins to recover.

He starts bringing takeaway dinners and board games. Sherlock, after some grumbling, develops a real fondness for playing _Dominion_. The man is actually verbally thankful for the food, which is a nonroutinemiracle. They don't talk all that much, but then they've never needed to.

One night he comes in bearing doner kebabs to find his friend engaged in poring through a large box of brightly colored cards. Sherlock glances up, smiles, and says, "Ah, John. Look! The Dark Ages expansion pack!"

"Nice. Who brought that for you?"

"Mary Watson."

Sherlock says this in the same neutral tone as he would say "Molly Hooper" or "Jeremy Lestrade." He feels a muscle clench in his jaw, but replies quite calmly, "She visits you?"

"As you know, she doesn't work Wednesday afternoons, and so she drops by after her rounds."

Still entirely nonchalant, but of course the goal is to see what his reaction will be. John, suddenly, finds himself angry. Not exactly an unusual state for him these days, but bloody hell if he isn't sick and tired of all the people in his life who are genetically incapable of being straightforward.

"And you don't mind this at all?" he asks.

"She_ is_ a client," Sherlock says, as if that explains everything.

"She shot you."

"Which I admit has not been my favorite experience. But given the circumstances it was an appropriate if not ideal decision for her to make."

"APPROPRI-" and he's shouting again, _fuck_. "Right. So. Everything's fine, then, we're all _best friends_ with the serial killer."

"Well, those of us in the trade distinguish the contract or otherwise professional killer from the serial killer, although I do admit it's a blurry line since financial gain is often among the motivations for repeated murder. And honestly, reading over her files, I'm not quite sure where I will docket her in my index. There's a commonly used argument that murder in the service of one's country is-"

Sherlock is actually _lecturing_, and he has to break in.

"Wait, what? You've read that file? How?"

"I stole the drive from your pocket, copied it when you went to the bathroom, then put it back. Really John, have you ever met me? Of course I read it."

He scrubs his hands over his face, trying to compose himself and failing. "I haven't."

"I know."

Sherlock doesn't make eye contact. He never does, when obliged to deal with the softer emotions. His fingers, swollen from IV fluids and steroids, sort nervily through the cards.

"I am not in love with Mary, and perhaps that makes it easier for me to forgive her. But I have done. And I do intend to address this issue of Magnusson as soon as I can conveniently manage it. And then-" he sighs. "I suppose it's up to the two of you. But you could do far worse."

"Don't see how."

"Oh, please. Do you know how many people want to shoot me? I'm just glad my first time was with a friend."

He laughs, because it's better than crying. Sherlock pats his shoulder heavily, twice, because he's got no idea how humans behave and presumably someone did that to him in the past and he hasn't deleted it.

They eat their kebabs and play the game.

* * *

He gets drunk. It seems like a good idea.

Around three in the morning he and the Macallan have another good idea and dial Mary's number. It rings and rings and goes to voicemail, so he hangs up, but then she calls him back ten seconds later.

"John?" she asks. Her voice is choked with sleep and he takes another drink and wonders if he might be dying or not. He finds he doesn't much care.

"What sort of scent did you wear? When you were her?"

"Are you drunk?"

It's not really a question and so he doesn't answer.

"_I_. Am trying to find out. What that woman was like? The woman. You. Before I knew you. Back when you only shot people I hadn't met."

Silence. Then "Are you reading the file right now?"

"I am not reading the fucking file, and I haven't read the fucking file, and I want to know if you wore this damn Claire De La Lune muck or if it's all part of the act." The moon-shaped bottle is sitting at his elbow, and he knocks it to the floor, wanting to smell it, wanting to drown in flowers.

It doesn't break or spill. Nothing really works right for him.

She sighs.

"I'm pretty sure they only invented Claire De La Lune two or three years ago. I remember seeing the commercials for it."

"So what did you use? Sherlock made me learn to identify the fifty top perfumes, maybe it was something I like." He feels that this is a cutting remark, although he's not entirely sure how, and he doesn't want to tell her how badly he'd done on that quiz.

"I didn't have one particular perfume. I wore a different one every day. I probably had… a hundred? Or so. I sorted them into categories and would choose one based on how I was feeling. Bit of an expensive thing to collect, had to give it up now that I make less, but there you are."

That seems like something _his_ Mary would do. She has dozens of scarves, and a massive selection of spices takes up two shelves in their kitchen. He can picture her, in some foreign country, doing terrible things, but still, somehow, _her_. Collecting and sorting little things when she's anxious.

"So- when you. When you stopped. Was it just - changing jobs?"

"No. The worst way to go undercover is to insist on holding on to any particular identifying traits. So I changed a fair bit."

"Like what?" It's honest curiosity, but the whiskey and a low-grade dread are roiling just below his breastbone.

"Oh, um. Well? I guess I used to like to run."

"Run what?"

She chuckles softly. "No, just run. I did about twenty-five miles a week on an ordinary week, and I'd try to do a marathon every year – though I couldn't always manage that. But I did loads of halfs and 10k races too."

"You like to swim."

"Yeah, now. Then I ran. "

"What else?"

"I wasn't a vegetarian back then. Though honestly _that_ was just inertia and I probably would have changed over eventually anyway. I always liked animals and I had a hard time reconciling that with eating them. I couldn't keep a cat since I traveled so much. I listened to different music. Tom Petty and Mark Knopfler and stuff like that."

"I love Mark Knopfler!" The liquor and the content of the conversation give him the dizzy feeling of chatting her up in a bar.

"I know. I had a bunch of the same albums you do."

He sits in the dark lounge, listening to her breathe, not knowing what he wants to know. She goes on.

"I had a bit of surgery, before I came here. Just changed my nose enough to fool facial recognition scanners. I used to dye my hair auburn, too."

He had already known about the nose job, oddly enough… the scars are tiny and well-hidden but he _is _a doctor and knows what they mean. He'd never mentioned that he'd noticed them because he didn't care and because he's never met a woman who responds well to observations of her physical flaws. And he knows that her hair is colored, obviously. That isn't a secret. He'd actually helped her with that once and fucked it up royally, though in fairness they'd both been a bit drunk and extremely kissy throughout the process.

But the rest of it- it's nothing that would put him off (unlike being an assassin, for example) but it's nothing like Mary. Mary likes cats to the point she actually fosters the fucking things. Mary listens to Enya and Norah Jones. Mary swims and will cook him meat meals but will never, ever eat them. This woman is a stranger and can't fit in the category in his head marked "Wife".

He asks, slurring a bit, "D'you miss it? Your old life?"

With no delay, she replies, "No. I mean, at first, it was difficult to adjust. But then- the life that I made here - it was good. It was the sort of life I might have had if I'd made different choices. Better choices. And then you came along and…"

"And what?"

"I was happy. Really happy. I never lied about that." He can hear tears in her voice. He'd never seen her cry until she and Sherlock pulled him out of a bonfire and now she seems to do it all the time.

He listens to her breathing, sipping the last of the whiskey, which doesn't taste like much of anything anymore. Eventually she clears her throat and says, "I saw that you paid the mortgage this month."

Had he? Wait, yes he had.

"I knew you'd have a hard time coming up with that much on your own."

"Thank you. It was kind."

"Oh, no worries," he says, and holy Christ, he's at the _Australian_ stage of drunk.

"Did you pay it because you want to come back?" she asks. There's hope in her voice and he's really had far too much to drink and he's so tempted to say "Yes" and go to Hampstead and put all of this miserable shit back in some locked room in whatever poor excuse he has for a mind palace and turn the key.

"I don't know." That's really all he _can_ say and not be a liar.

Two breaths.

"Right."

"Yeah."

"I've got work in a few hours. Don't – drink any more, please? I'm really not worth it."

"I'll be the judge of that, madam," he says, grandly, but the Macallan is gone and there's nowhere he is going but bed. Or sofa, really. The seventeen steps that lead to his room might as well be Everest.

"I love you."

"Good night, Mary."


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock is discharged from hospital. It's earlier than normal, but since he will be living with a physician they move him up a bit. Reading between the lines, the man has been a monster to deal with since he started feeling better. The doctor (a tall, pretty woman with dark skin, curly hair, and big eyes) has that distinct "Sherlock" flare to her nostrils when she gives him the care instructions.

Carefully, John helps his friend up the stairs, ensconces him in his chair. He fetches tea and toast, Sherlock's laptop, the newspapers and magazines that have built up, and the remote control. Then he gradually proceeds to lose his mind. It's never been a walk in the park being Sherlock's flatmate, but when the detective is in pain, drying out, and can't take any cases to direct his nervous energy, it's sheer hell.

After a week, because there are people who do need Sherlock's services and because it would be wrong to suffocate the man with his own pillow, he buys himself a set of Google glasses and a Bluetooth earpiece. They are terribly expensive and make him look like a tit, but he brings them back to Baker Street and says that he will use them to be Sherlock's eyes and ears at whatever crime scenes are required. It'll certainly be more convenient than hauling his laptop around.

As he expects, the gift is a hit.

What he doesn't expect is the intense interest in the _technology_. Generally anything more complex than the lever as ruled as "not my problem" until and unless it fails to produce the required results… or is involved in some arcane sort of crime. But Sherlock spends hours setting up the glasses, linking them into the WiFi, and playing with them see what their limits are.

Eventually the glasses (eight hundred pounds, Christ) are hurled onto the table with the pronouncement, "Aaargh. I've been an idiot."

He doesn't ask.

It turns out to be really fun to be Sherlock Holmes out on a case. To just say "Miss Holder, you ARE the jewel thief" as though he was Anne Robinson is such a bloody-minded pleasure. It's strange to hear Sherlock's voice in his head, but Sherlock has somehow managed it, and unlike Sherlock he does have the ability to switch the voice off.

Sherlock is desperate for activity, and so even though there are no cases in the offing higher than a six, he's kept very busy.

* * *

She starts showing up in his dreams – well, his nightmares, really. If he ever has pleasant dreams he forgets them instantly upon waking. In his dream, she's a snake, and that doesn't seem strange at all, because by dream logic she's always been a snake. She's black and smooth and enormous and she wraps him in her coils and he's not sure whether he wants to escape but he knows it isn't possible. The heat of her scalds his skin as she twines around him, and he surges up towards her as she sinks her fangs into his chest.

He wakes up, panting, with a painfully hard erection. He's been taught how to deal with nightmares, and so he focuses on his breathing and mentally tries to relax each muscle group in turn.

The fear fades, but somehow Mary does not. He can't seem to stop seeing the bounce of her breasts, the intent expression on her face as she rides him, chasing her orgasm while he tries to hold back his own. He can't stop seeing the sweet way she looks when he makes her come.

Getting out of bed, he takes yesterday's undershirt from the hamper, lies down again. Wraps his hand around his shaft (the hand is too big and too coarse) and jerks off. It doesn't take long – it's been a while for him and he is doesn't want to try and prolong it. Just a few strokes, and he spends into the soft white cotton. He makes no sound when he comes, a lifetime of shared dormitories and barracks effortlessly sealing his lips.

The dirty shirt goes onto the floor and he laughs at himself, because it's still better than crying. Laughs at the idea of wanking to the thought of his wife, a woman who had willingly stood in front of a crowd and effectively promised to shag him until one of them was dead. A woman who is barely five miles away, wanting him to turn up.

He's always known there was a ridiculous man living in this flat.

It's just for the first time, he realizes that it's him.

* * *

Once he starts, he can't really stop thinking about it. Sex. It's like being a teenager again, except that now it's a question of real experiences instead of blurry hypotheses.

It was something they'd always been good at. They weren't all that skilled at talking about feelings (him) or telling the fucking truth (her) or figuring out how to split the finances (either of them) but sex was one of the things that had never been a problem. When they'd begun their relationship, he hadn't been thinking of marrying her. He hadn't been really thinking of her at all, except as something to do. He'd approached her because it was obviously preferable to be shagging a pretty nurse than not to be shagging a pretty nurse.

Even back then their sex life had been lovely. They were both experienced, and it just took demonstrating specific preferences for it to be very good indeed. Then she somehow infiltrated his exhausted mind and battered heart and it had, beyond all expectation, gotten better.

After a long and complicated history with women, Mary had been like a glass of water to a man lost in the desert. She liked sex. She liked ordinary Tuesday-night sex, and she liked more elaborate variations. Most of all, she liked sex with _him_.

He used to take Saturday morning shifts at the clinic where they worked. She did not, and she liked to sleep in, when she could. But on those mornings, when he'd get out of the shower and walk to the dresser to put on his pants, if he looked over to their bed, he would see Mary watching him get dressed. If he made eye contact, she'd smile, her eyes alight with lust, and beckon him over. Sometimes he would go back to bed with her and sometimes he would kiss her goodbye and leave, since he did have work to do. But he had had found it strangely healing to know that this woman simply wanted him, wanted his body, wanted what his body could do to her body.

Of course, back then, like an idiot, he'd been under the impression that Mary was an unusually honest person. Not like Sherlock, who used the truth as a sword to keep people at a distance. Just someone who said what she thought and didn't bother with evasions. It had always made her kindness more remarkable.

She's lied about everything else. Has she lied about that?

It's not exactly a foreign concept to him that women do sometimes fake orgasms, fake interest, in order to get what they want. And certainly he'd never been quite clear on what she saw in him: he isn't tall, handsome, or successful. Everything she'd screamed at him in their fight was true.

He's a thug. He's an uninvolved and inattentive husband with a fetish for violence.

Maybe he's a disappointing lay as well?

A cup of tea sits cooling in his hands, and he looks at the _Guardian _on his knee without reading it. Mary has a secret, nameless spot that's not quite her bum and not quite her back… well, not nameless, it's the lumbrosacral region, but in these contexts medical terminology is unappealing. He can brush his thumb over it and she'll shiver. One time, he'd spent a bare five minutes working there with his lips and tongue until she was reduced to a jelly and begged, literally begged, for him to fuck her.

Feigned shivers? Feigned-

"Oh, for the love of God. Shut up shut up SHUT UP!"

He's jolted out of his thoughts by Sherlock, who has thrown his own newspaper (The _Daily Mail_) onto the floor in high dudgeon.

"Didn't _technically_ say anything," he replies, mildly.

"You could at least have the courtesy not to think so loudly on such _dull _subjects."

"You do realize that's not actually a thing that people can do?"

"Any personal relationships involve significant risk for someone attempting to maintain a false identity. A relationship with you – and thus a relationship with me – was not only a risk but an actively stupid decision on her part. And while one can make _many_ legitimate complaints about Mrs. Watson-"

"Oh, you admit that, do you? She'll be so disappointed you're giving up the presidency of her fan club."

"One cannot call her a stupid woman. Therefore presumably she stuck with you because she _likes you quite a lot_." The last words are in a mocking high-pitched sing-song. "Though God knows why. Do you have any idea how difficult you are to live with?"

"I sit, silently, for twenty minutes, and all of a sudden _I'm_ the one who's difficult to live with?"

"Yes!"

With that, Sherlock flounces off to his room and slams the door – at least, that's clearly the effect he's going for. The flounce is really more of a shuffle, though it's still an improvement since he manages it by himself. The slam is as good as it's ever been.

He's irritated, now, and tense, and without really thinking about it he throws on his jacket and walks out the front door – which he does not slam, since _he's_ a bloody adult.

He goes for a walk without any particular destination in mind. If he thought about it, it would sort of make sense that he boards the Jubilee line north and gets off at West Hampstead. People in grief flock to Mary like birds to a lighthouse. The day she shot Sherlock was far from the first time he'd seen one of her friends come to her with problems to solve. Even when she _is_ his trouble, the urge to seek her help still drives his feet.

Although he still has his key, he rings the bell, some residual self-preservation instinct telling him not to surprise her. She comes to the door, immediately followed by a wave of baking scents, wearing ratty old clothes. It's Sunday, which is when she makes bread, just like always. Mary has a smut of flour on her cheek and says "Oh!" when she sees him and it makes his chest ache.

He wants to rest his head in her lap and go to sleep. He wants to strangle her with his bare hands. Poised on this precarious equilibrium point, he can't quite manage either to step forward or to turn around and go away. Then Mary, who for better or for worse always knocks him off balance, grabs the lapels of his coat and pulls him to her so hard that their teeth clack when they kiss.

"Bad idea, bad idea" his superego says while he kicks the door shut behind him and presses her up against the bannister of the stair and she scrabbles his jacket off his shoulders. "Very bad idea" when they stumble into the lounge like a pair of drunks. "Really, just about the worst thing for you to do at this point," it echoes when he pulls her t-shirt over her head and leaves her flushed and gasping. Then it's struck dumb when she reaches behind her back to unhook her bra (new, blue, plain). She always used to have a slim build but pregnancy (Jesus Christ, what the fuck is he going to do about that?) has changed her, made her voluptuous.

For the first time since he's seen them, Mary's breasts are not just nice but incredible.

"Yeah, all right then, but you're going to regret it," the superego says. Then it gratefully shuts up, and he buries his face in her throat. She smells of shampoo and chlorhexidine and bread, and she moans when he nips at the tender skin where her neck meets her shoulder.

He trails his way down her chest, alternating between kisses that make her sigh and bites that make her gasp. Dropping to his knees like a supplicant at the altar, he slips the waist of her shorts down and away. At some point she makes a weak sound of protest which he ignores entirely, planting a kiss squarely front and center on her knickers.

They're quite simple. Black, cotton, elderly, with the elastic popping out- in normal circumstances they would signal "not interested just now." But circumstances haven't been normal for months, and when he slips his fingers under the seam where her thigh becomes her crotch she is slippery and hot and ready for him. He pulls the pants down to her ankles and kisses her where he now is very confident that she wants him, while she twines her fingers in his hair and leans back against the wall.

He can tell she's getting close – she tends to hold her breath just beforehand- when she comes to her senses and pushes away his head.

"Bed?" she proposes.

"Sofa," he replies.

"Right," she says.

Then she drags him up and pushes him backwards until the couch hits the backs of his knees. Mary yanks his trousers and pants down to his ankles, a cascade of pocket change announcing their fall, shoves him into a seated position, and sinks onto him… and God, but she feels good. When she begins to move he cries out, as though he can't help it (he could, he really could, if he wanted to).

She's undoing the buttons of his shirt with her clever fingers and it seems too much, too intimate. So he lifts her and pushes her down into the carpet, knowing that he will regret this the next day, since his back is not what it was. He pins her arms above her head, which isn't normally something he likes to do, because it makes him feel like a rapist. But she angles her hips to receive him and he can thrust hard into her and make her scream.

She does. He may make a sound… again, not his habit during orgasm, but it's not out of the question.

And then they are panting and covered in sweat and he pulls out of her and rests at her side. There's a peaceful, hazy moment, which is broken when Mary props herself on her elbows. In her hand is the little grey thumb drive marked A.G.R.A., and she says, hesitantly, "I think you dropped this."

All of a sudden he becomes aware that he is still sort of wearing most of his clothes. She is entirely naked, and it makes her look small and vulnerable. He lets out a breath that he wasn't aware of holding, and plucks it from her fingers.

"Must have done. Thank you."

Then he tucks his dick back into his pants and leaves. He does this in such a hurry that he doesn't realize that he's left his belt behind until he's back on the Tube.

* * *

The superego was right, he does regret it. He's solved one of the issues that preoccupies him, though all that's turned up to replace it is a feeling of being ashamed of himself.

It doesn't stop him from going back. From going back four more times, in fact.

The fifth visit he makes is very late at night. It's frosty out, and their bedroom is pitch black. When he climbs into their bed and puts his arms around her she shivers, not from desire, but from the chill of his skin.

The short English summer is over, and when he puts his cold hands on her belly he realizes that the time he can playact like she's just gained weight is over too. This is not fat, it's the firm bump of a second-trimester pregnancy. For a moment he rests his hands over her pubic bones and tries to remember how many finger-widths of fundal height McDonald's rule says correspond to which weeks.

It's not as though he has to. On their wedding night they'd sat with the smartphone app Mary used to track that sort of thing and come up with at least an approximate date of conception. The due date they'd estimated is January 25th which he can't forget any more than he can forget his own birthday.

He kisses her, just between her shoulder blades, and he can feel her melt in his arms.

This time it's tender, if slightly awkward. Her new shape means that the angles between them have to change a bit. When he slips into her he thinks, as he sometimes does, how basically bizarre and unique sex is… putting part of yourself inside someone else, and how much stranger it must be for a woman, to have someone inside of you. To let someone share your body for a while. Maybe it doesn't seem that weird to them, since most of them will actually let someone else do it for nine months at a stretch.

Then Mary nips at his jaw and presses her hands into his arse to urge him deeper. He stops thinking again for a blissful few minutes.

When they've finished, he rests, balanced on his elbows so as not to crush her (them) with his weight. She runs her hands up from his hips, along the sensitive sides of his chest, and snakes them free under his arms. He holds his breath as she brushes her fingertips along his face, tracing the ridges of his brows, the bridge of his nose, running her thumbs across the light stubble on his cheeks.

He wonders how a killer can be quite so gentle.

"No," she says, firmly. She writhes in an odd but effective way, since clearly what she wants is to get him out and off of her. "No. I can't stand this anymore."

Mary throws her legs over the side of the bed and there's the subtle noises that say she's putting her feet into her slippers. He can tell that's she's trying to force her voice to stay cool and calm when she says, "I can't stand this. Sex - and not talking – and I'm sorry but I can't deal with it. I can't go on like this. Please… unless you want to actually work this out and stay I'd rather you didn't come back."

He wonders if this is how she sounds before she pulls the trigger. He should ask Sherlock.

The bathroom door closes behind her and he can hear the shower running.

He does want to stay. But he doesn't come back.


	3. Chapter 3

It's Bonfire Night again, and to his surprise he's asked to a party. There normally would have been several more invitations, but it turns out that leaving your pregnant wife and moving in with the man who everyone STILL assumes is your lover doesn't exactly endear you to your friends.

He doesn't go. In his mind, the fires are now associated with "Afghanistan," "Swimming pools," "Circuses," and "Devon" in the category "Places where I've almost died," rather than with anything pleasurable.

By this point he's entirely enveloped in the Sherlock Holmes Lifestyle, so he only sleeps and eats when it becomes a pure biological requirement. Thus, he's awake well after midnight when Sherlock comes in, flings himself on the sofa, and starts strangling the violin. His friend feels well tonight, clearly… Sherlock's moving in the same ballistic manner he did before he was shot.

So he asks, "Where have you been?'

Sherlock plays a tortured arpeggio and replies, "I went to see Mary."

"And how is she?" Very calm, very relaxed. This is how it will be. This is something he can manage.

"Rather large."

Sherlock is frowning when he says "Rather large," and with a start, John realizes that the detective doesn't approve of his conduct.

Sherlock "My God Janine I never thought I could love anyone but you complete me" Holmes disapproves of his conduct to a woman.

Life is unreal. Dogs and cats are living together, and mass hysteria has taken hold.

Sherlock sets his bow down, takes the violin off his shoulder, begins plucking random notes on the strings and humming pitchily while twiddling the pegs. The thing must be out of tune, not that you can tell when he's playing his awful thinking music. "I wanted to inform her that I will be addressing one of her current issues over the Christmas holidays. I know we've got almost two months, but she'll be too pregnant to travel soon and I wanted to catch her before she buggers off somewhere. She's good enough that I imagine it would be very difficult even for me to find her afterwards."

"What?" Because in all this time of debating whether or not he'd leave her for good, it has never once occurred to him that she might be doing the same thing. "She wouldn't do that. Without a word?"

Sherlock is staring at him with his "Everyone but me is an idiot" expression.

"Not quite without a word. She did in fact give me a letter to take to you before I convinced her otherwise. But really, John, while I admit that women are more your area than mine, exactly what in your experience of Mary makes you think that she's the sort of person who would hesitate to take the nuclear option?"

Exactly nothing makes him think that, and all of a sudden he feels like he is seeing clearly for the first time in months. She'd shoot someone she likes to save herself, spare someone she hates to protect _him_… what would she do, or not do, for her child?

"Pregnancy," Sherlock says, "Has been her protection, contrary to the normal order of things. It's allowed her to be unsensible and stay here rather than clearing the country and starting over somewhere else. While pregnant she's the captain of her own ship, but after the birth you will have a claim on your son or daughter. Should you opt to take the child and turn her in – or alternatively to reject both of them- then Magnussen will lose his chance at my brother and she will therefore be in terrible danger. Prison isn't the half of it. She's got powerful enemies."

"I would not _ever_ -"

"Wouldn't you? Well, perhaps not. But she _is_ on a fairly predictable timetable and you've given her no reason to think otherwise. In any case, I've fixed it. _She_ will remain in England, _I_ will recover whatever incriminating documents Magnussen has, and we can all stop revolving around _you_. You really ought to read that file and move on, one way or the other."

Sherlock sounds - really pissed off, all things considered.

"What's in it?" he asks. He dreads the answer, even the filtered one, but at that moment he really wants to find out.

"NOTHING. Well, no, quite a bit. It makes for _fascinating_ reading. But mostly it's nuance added to a story that you already know. And it's always better to know the entire truth than not to know it. Mysteries are repellent."

This last statement appears to have come from such an alternate-universe Sherlock that he can feel his eyebrows approaching his hairline well before he clears his throat to say anything. Sherlock interrupts whatever he was going to say with that familiar half-smile.

"That is, in fact, how I feel. I enjoy_ solutions, _not mysteries. I think possibly you don't, which is why you married while I am content as a bachelor. Apparently maintaining some element of mystery is key to the long-term success of a relationship."

"Okay, first off, you need to stop reading _Cosmopolitan_. Second, this sort of thing is _not_ what they are talking about."

* * *

The ink on the thumb drive has worn off from constant handling. He finds a Sharpie in a drift of papers and rewrites A.G.R.A. in bold black capitals. He turns the device in his hands constantly, unconsciously… while seeing patients, while talking to suspects, while in line at the bank. It would be the work of two seconds to plug it into the USB port, but something always constrains him.

He keeps going back to one particular memory, one that's tucked away in a secret part of his mind.

It was late summer, and it was uncomfortably hot in his flat. He had been dreaming… it was awful, as always, but he couldn't really remember what it was about. But he heard a woman's voice saying, "John, John," and then "Aaargh! Shit!"

Then he woke up all the way. The bedside lamp was on. Mary had a hand clamped over her face, and blood was dripping through her fingers.

He knew, right away, that he had done this to her. It was inevitable, really. There was always something he would do to make this happen. But instead of shouting at him she moved her hand and said, "Is it broken?"

The trust in her eyes made him think, vaguely, of shooting himself. But just then that wasn't what she needed him to do so he gently palpated her nose… which was sound. Mary stood up, the blood veiling her chin and dripping on to her shirt, and asked, "Can you get me an ice pack? And my purse?"

She went into the bathroom, and he went into the front room and retrieved her bag. The only ice pack he had was a circular thing made to chill bottles of white wine, but he bought it and her purse to the w.c. Mary was sitting on the toilet, lowering her head and pinching the bridge of her nose, and she mutely extended a hand to take what he had to give her.

Twenty minutes or ten thousand years went by. There were three drops of blood on the sheets, arranged almost artistically. He heard the water running in the sink, and then Mary emerged from the bathroom, her t-shirt gone and a tampon stuffed in her right nostril.

"Don't laugh," she said, warningly.

Laughter was about the farthest thing from his mind just at that point, and he said, "Mary…"

"You know it was an accident, right? I'm not angry."

He had blinked at her then. How could she not be angry? "I _hit_ you," he said.

"You didn't," she replied. Then she considered that statement and rephrased, "Well, I mean, obviously, you did. But you weren't trying to hit me. Or anyone, I don't think. You were mumbling, and then when I tried to wake you up you shouted "Don't!" and did this."

She flung both her arms out, convulsively.

"And I got in the way. It was an accident." Mary sat on the bed, tucking a leg beneath her. "I think maybe you were trying to catch him."

She reached out her hand and put it on his back, and then, yes, she was actually petting him, as if he was the one who needed support and consolation. He drew in a deep, shuddery breath, and said, "It's not as though I can even promise you this won't happen again."

"It won't. Next time you have a nightmare I'm getting a pointy stick and waking you from five feet away," Mary replied.

"I'm not just talking about the nightmares," he snapped, before dropping the volume to normal conversational levels and continuing, "It's everything. The drink and the temper and all this-"

He broke off and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"I'm just really fucked up."

"You are, a bit-" Mary said, musingly.

"Oh, cheers."

"_But_ you're getting better. Really! For all your griping about seeing your shrink you're obviously making progress with her. Your drinking is barely at British baseline levels anymore, and your temper has improved even since we've been together."

"It's _because _we've been together."

"Possibly. I _am_ magic. This," she said, gesturing at her nose, "Is a blip. I've had worse and I can deal with it if it's a one-off. Which I think it will be."

"Optimistic," he said, bitterly.

"Isn't that love, for people our age? Triumph of optimism over experience?" she said.

That knocked him back. It had been a few months, but they hadn't said anything about love yet.

"Wait. You love me?" John asked.

Mary blushed. She was generally a very composed type so this was the first time he'd seen her blush, and it was stunning how red she could get. The tampon in her nose didn't improve the picture any, either. She took her hand off his back and flopped down on the pillows and rolled away from him. And then she said:

"Yes. A bit. Maybe. Shut up. It doesn't matter."

She _did_. She bloody well did. It wasn't just him with the extraneous emotions, it was both of them, and holy hell this was _brilliant_.

"You, Mary Morstan," he said, "Are a saint."

She laughed at that, an ugly hoarse bark of a laugh that time and new data would render meaningful.

"I'm _really_ not," she said.

"You are," he said, and he laid down, gathered her into his arms, and pulled her closer. "It's mutual."

"I'm fairly sure you aren't a saint either," Mary said, drily.

"I meant the other thing."

"_Oh."_

Oh indeed.

* * *

It's quite an ordinary winter morning on Baker Street, really. The chilly light of early morning is just enough for him to see by when he wakes up. He dresses, and packs an overnight bag, which goes very quickly _because_ he keeps all his clothes carefully folded and organized, thank you, Sherlock.

In the drawer of his night table are a small grey thumb drive and a Sig Sauer semi-automatic. He puts the thumb drive in his left-hand pocket. One way or the other, he won't be requiring it after today. He checks the clip on the gun, decocks it, and puts it in his right-hand pocket. He doesn't expect to require_ it_ today, but with Sherlock you really never know.

The man himself is downstairs in the lounge, juddering with nervous energy and glancing over at Bill Wiggins who is… also there, for some reason that has yet to be properly explained. When Sherlock sees him, the detective springs to his feet, pours a cup of coffee, doses it with the eighteen pounds of sugar that he likes, and leaves the flat. All without a word. Wiggins trails along after him.

He rolls his eyes. Then he switches off the coffee pot (Sherlock has left nothing but a few drops), turns off the oven, brushes crumbs into the sink, and picks up his bag. He takes one last look around the old familiar place, the scene of so many memories. And then he leaves, a damaged, broken, and dangerous man, seeking a woman who's just the same way.

Which sounds like the personal ad from hell, but there you go.

Sherlock drives, because he is a control freak. Bill Wiggins takes the passenger seat, and since the back is roomy enough and Sherlock informs him that he's got the shortest legs, he takes the rear without complaint. They pull out into heavy London traffic and eventually get on the M1 north to Yorkshire.

In the front, Sherlock and Bill play something that Wiggins calls "Yellow Car". He declines to participate because it is quite simply the stupidest game ever invented and he knows that Sherlock gets more hypercompetitive the stupider the game gets. By tacit mutual agreement they never speak of the _Snakes and Ladders_ incident. He has more than enough to keep himself occupied.

Words aren't easy. Writing his blog had mostly felt like a punishment or an unwanted return to school. Producing a semi-decent marriage proposal had required half a dozen rough drafts and a lot of swearing – and then, of course, he'd never actually gotten to use it. This time is no exception to the rule.

Starting over. Building a new life on the rubble of the old one. Essentially the "asking a girl out" bit combined with the "marriage proposal" bit with a heaping helping of "oh, and by the way, I'm going to make sure you're safe from the consequences of the life you led before me." So it's weird that even as he turns over the impossible sentences in his brain the predominant emotion he has is… _excitement_. There's new possibilities, now. A new life, and a baby, and a wife who intrigues him even more than when he said "I do." It may well be optimism triumphing over experience but damn if it isn't thrilling.

When they get to the Holmes family home, Sherlock and Wiggins go inside immediately. He loiters in the graveled drive, not wanting to make an appearance before he must.

After a while, when the chill is starting to sink in, he meanders up near the house and stands where he can look through the wavy glass window into the parlor. And there's Mary.

She looks… tired, and ill, and very, very pregnant. Sod "rather large," she's _vast_. He has a pang at that – not guilt, that'll undoubtedly be along later. Just regret, at how much he's missed. But then Mrs. Holmes putters over and hands her a steaming cup of tea, and Mary smiles, and all he can think of is how it feels to make her smile.

So he goes around to the front door and walks in. Mary looks up, and for just an instant before she averts her glance to look at her book, there's pure fear and panic on her face.

Mr. Holmes says something that can be answered with commonplace reflexive statements and volunteers to depart. When Mary looks at him, the fear in her eyes is gone. Her defenses have slammed into place perfectly and she's a sheet of ice.

It doesn't matter. He knows, now, what he will do.

The story begins.


End file.
